Process of reclaiming cotton-waste.



G. M. WHITIN. PROCESS OF RECLAIMING COTTON WASTE. APPLICATION FILED JUNE 28. 1911.

1,235,949. PatentedAug. 7, 1917.

Wimases: Inventor: Um. W 772mm 20% t TE GEORGE MARSTON WHITIN, OF

WHITINSVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS, ASSIGNOR TO THE WHITIN MACHINE WORKS, OF WHITINSVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS, A CORPORATION OF MASSACHUSETTS.

PROCESS OF RECLAIMING COTTON-WASTE.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented Aug. 7, 1917.

Application filed .Tune 28, 1911. Serial No. 635,847.

To all whom it may concern.

Be it known that I, Gnonsn MARsToN lVHIlIN, of .Vhitinsville, Worcester county, Massachusetts, have invented the new and useful Improvements in Processes of Reclaiming Cotton-Taste set forth in the following description.

My invention relates to the economic reclaiming of cotton wastes known as spinners and roving wastes or other like soft waste which has previously been subjected to twist and the invention is based on the discovery I have made that such waste may be fed without preliminary treatment to a roller carding machine, without injury to such machines or to the staple itself, and that the sliver product of such operation will contain allthe fibers of the waste unimpaired by such treatment and in practically the same condition as to parallelism, cleanliness and uniformity of length as when they previously emerged from the machine in which they were carded in the first instance. Such carding machine sliver may be thereupon further worked, either alone or in admixture with other directly obtained slivers, according to the usual practice in manufacturing yarn.

Heretofore it has been the practice in reclaiming cotton waste of this kind to. put it first through one of the several types of willows or similar machine which beats it and tears it open, producing at the same time more or less broken fibers constituting waste of an inferior grade. The beaten and torn-apart product of this machine is then commonly mixed in small proportions with raw cotton as taken from the bale and passed with it through the usual bale-openers and through the subsequent machines following the'openers, which prepare the cotton for carding, the waste being thus made to pursue again, with the raw cotton, the same course it has previously followed in reaching the condition in which it first became discarded as waste material. As in the willow, waste is also produced by the action of the bale-opener, and also by the subsequent machines, and the particular waste to be reclaimed, which has been mixed with the cotton passing through these machines, therefore becomes diminished in weight substantially in proportion to the percentage of waste produced in each of the said machines,

.have generally suffered a and by the time the said waste has reached its former condition of useful stock it will loss of from 12 to 33% in weight according to the number and nature of the workings, besides being less desirable as a yarn-making material, on account of the repeated workings it has received, which tend to make the fibers slippery and difiicult to work further. In cases where the beaten product of the willow, or of such initial opening-machine as may have been used, cannot be mixed with raw cotton fed to the bale-opener, the usual practice has been to run the waste, alone, through a similar series of opening and scutching machines ultimately producing a lap thereof, which is then carded like other cotton of equal grade. In either process the waste is put a second time through the same course of treatment it has already undergone, or through a still longer and more severe treatment, resulting in proportionate impairment of its weight and value, the extent of deterioration which it thereby suffers being so great as to reduce its value to that of the next lower market grade of staple at the corresponding stage of manufacture.

By directly feeding such waste in the first instance to a carding machine in accordance with my discovery, I have succeeded in eliminating the loss by deterioration in quality and also the loss in weight, above referred to, and am thereby enabled to take advantage of the favorable fiber conditions which exist in the waste from its previous workings, without putting it again through a repetition of the same steps.

The waste is taken as gathered from the spinning and roving rooms and spread in a layer of substantially uniform thickness upon a lattice creeper which automatically feeds it to the card, through which it passes without the production of further waste, and from which it will be found to emerge as a lap or sliver of good quality. The opening or unlooping of the separate pieces of the waste and also the untwisting of the strands of which it is composed, are simultaneously performed by the action of the card. The sliver is preferably received in a coiler can such as usually employed with carding machines, and in which it is then carried to the rear of the drawing frames to be therein doubled and. drawn with more slivers of the same or different manner of production. Thereafter the process may proceed as in the usual course of manufacturing cotton into yarn, the fiber of the waste having been thus restored to its former state of usefulness with but a single additional treatment, and without change in its character or quality. If the original waste has been produced for instance out of cotton that had already been combed so that it, therefore, consists of substantially parallel fibers, all exceeding a predetermined length, the same condition will obtain in the sliver produced from such waste by my carding process, and such sliver can, therefore, be admixed with other similarly combed and directly obtained slivers without changing the character of the ultimate product. The various commercial and practical advantages of the process will be obvious to cotton spinners without further explanation.

I prefer to use a roller card having at least one breast althou h several breasts ma C! be employed, arranged in series or tandem relation, one receiving the waste from the lattice creeper and feeding to the other, and the last feeding tothe licker-in and the main carding cylinder, from which the fibers are dolfed in the usual manner in the form of sliver which is coiled in the can. I also prefer to feed the waste directly to such apparatus, that is to say without any preliminary treatment whatever, because it is my object to avoid working of the waste beyond that absolutel necessary, as above explained.

It is furthermore within my invention to repeat the-passage of the waste through the same carding machine or a similar machine when for any reason such further carding may be deemed necessary, but it will be found that a single carding is suflicient for the special kind of waste referred to and that the advantage of one less working will more than offset the slight improvement in parallelism to be gained by a second carding.

In the accompanying drawing forming part hereof I have illustrated, by way of example, an ordinary roller card suitable for use 1n carrying out my process, such card having a main carding cylinder 1, a series of worker and dofling rolls 2, a llckerin 3 and an ordinary form of breast, 4, also supplied with dofling and working cylinders of the usual kind. A lattice creeper feed 5. or conveyer belt is arranged to receive the waste and carry it to the feed rollers 6 of the breast; after passing through which it is taken up by the licker-in 3, and transferred to the carding cylinder, from which it is doffed by the doffer cylinder 7 in the usual way and coiled in the can 8. The sliver thus produced is subsequently sub jected to the doubling, drawing, and spin ning operations, which are well known to those skilled in the art and therefore require no special illustration or description.

I claim as my invention the following:

1. The process of reclaiming roving, spinners, and like soft Waste which has been previously subjected to twist, consisting in carding such waste in a roller card having one or more breasts and without preliminary loosening treatment to form a sliver thereof, doubling and drawing such sliver with other carded slivers directly obtained from raw cotton and spinning the mixture thus formed.

2. The process of reclaiming roving, spinners and like soft waste which has been previously subjected to twist, consisting in opening the waste, untwisting the individual strands thereof and carding the material, all in the same operation, and then subjecting the carded material to the customary operations leading up to the spinning of the yarn.

3. The process of reclaiming roving, spinners and like soft waste which has been previously subjected to twist, consisting in feeding such waste in a layer of substan tially uniform thickness to a card, and by the operation of said card simultaneously opening, untwisting and carding such waste forming a card sliver thereof and thereafter subjecting said sliver to operations leading up to the spinning of the yarn.

In testimony whereof, I have signed this specification in the presence of two witnesses.

enonen MARSTON WHITIN.

Witnesses:

OSCAR L. OWEN,

H. GREENWOOD.

Copies of this patent may be obtained for five cents each, by addressing the Commissioner of Patents,

. Washington, D. G. 

